Trying to survive in Bachmann’s district

Over the past two years, a total of nine teenagers have committed suicide in a Minnesota school district represented by Rep. Michele Bachmann—the latest in May—and many more students have attempted to take their lives. State public health officials have labeled the area a “suicide contagion area” because of the unusually high death rate.

Some of the victims were gay, or perceived to be by their classmates, and many were reportedly bullied. And the anti-gay activists who are some of the congresswoman’s closest allies stand accused of blocking an effective response to the crisis and fostering a climate of intolerance that allowed bullying to flourish.

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Teachers and counselors in the district, as well as civil rights activists, say that Bachmann’s closest allies like the MFC have helped create a vitriolic climate in the wake of the teen suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin area that may have hampered the community’s ability to effectively address what was, at root, a serious mental health crisis. Following the deaths and the publicity about bullying and anti-gay sentiments, the school district became inflamed with nasty infighting over whether promoting anti-bullying efforts was simply a cover for advancing the homosexual agenda in schools.

That seems to be what the extra-pious are good at – coming up with pointless reasons to treat some people as Evil-Other and then persecute them.

The anti-gay climate in the schools in Bachmann’s district has been so extreme that it has attracted the attention of the Justice Department and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which are both investigating allegations of anti-gay bullying.

14 Responses to “Trying to survive in Bachmann’s district”

What’s worse than the bullying from the children is the active defense of the bullies by the adults in the school in the community. There’s something seriously wrong with ALL of those people, but especially the ones who are actively resisting any restriction on their hate with the full knowledge that children are dying over it.

And you know they are people saying to one another, “What’s the problem? These won’t become adults and recruit my children.”

Or perhaps not. One assumes that most people come to an understanding of sexual orientation, through friends and family members, that doesn’t involve willful depravity. But don’t share that with the kids.

As a Minnesotan, I’d never really connected the ugly situation in Anoka-Hennepin with Bachmann (who hails from a different exurb on the other side of the Twin Cities) particularly. Yes, the school district lies within Bachmann’s funky-shaped congressional district, and certainly the right-wing homophobic assholes who make life horrible for gay kids are the same choads who voted her to Congress. The <i>Mother Jones</i> article makes a fair amount out of the fact that (1) various right-wing organizations in the state have contributed to the homophobic climate in Anoka-Hennepin and (2) said organizations support, and have institutional connections to, Bachmann. That’s all true enough, but it seems to me the connections mean somewhat less than the article implies. I don’t really see how the situation in Anoka-Hennepin would be any better if Bachmann had lost her election in 2008 or ’10, or if the school district were reallocated into the Minneapolis congressional district represented by Congress’s first Muslim, flaming liberal Keith Ellison.

In conservative parts of the country, bigotry from local politicians and populations can and does make life very hard for despised minorities. Right-wing organizations and the right-wing politicians they support often fan those flames. By that measure, I’m not convinced that Bachmann’s congressional district is measurably worse than a lot of conservative ones around the country, including several represented by Democrats. Bachmann is obviously a freakish homophobic wingnut, but I don’t think she personally is high on the list of people who are responsible for the ugliness in Anoka-Hennepin.

This kind of thing is always larger than a single constituency or MP, so I suspect Rieux is correct. The UK bun-fight over the same issue (and I seem to recall there were suicides here, too) was ‘Section 28’:

The connection is tenuous I suppose, but its the same kind of situation where a leader provides cover and even encouragement to people who do horrible things. Communities take their cues from the top so to speak. (bad analogy time) I visit a lot of Mcdonalds for their playlands you can always tell if there is a terrible manager, (I realize it varies by area but in my experience Mcdonalds are very well run and usually very clean and effecient) All it takes is a bad manager and the place will run like crap and be filthy like a burger king which are almost always dirty.

Will these bullies shed a tear for the lives they helped destroy? Will the adults that foster this environment feel shame for what they helped happen? This is cynical, even for me, but I fear that in both cases, no, they won’t.

The connection is tenuous I suppose, but its the same kind of situation where a leader provides cover and even encouragement to people who do horrible things.

But I don’t see how Michele Bachmann is a “leader” of the Anoka-Hennepin School District. She’s a Congresswoman (who lives thirty miles away and represented an entirely different exurb in the state legislature before being elected to Congress). For whatever it’s worth, the governor of Minnesota, our U.S. Senators, and President Obama—that is, all of the elected officials who govern that entire geographical area, besides Bachmann—are all Democrats. The first three of those four have very good records on GLBT issues, too. (Obama, meh… well, you know.)

I live in a considerably bluer area of Minnesota, though I am within easy driving distance of Bachmann’s district, and relatives of mine live there. I’ll cop to the unavoidable myopia that that involves (clearly someone‘s voting for this woman, whether I know them personally or not), but that said, I have a hard time envisioning anyone straight-facedly citing Michele Bachmann as a leader. More to the point, I don’t see why it would be any harder for a homophobe who lives in Erik Paulsen (R)’s district, or Collin Peterson (D)’s, to treat her that way than it would be for one of her actual constituents to do so.

Tea Party leader Bachmann today on MSNBC (it was a clip) said she would rather see the country default than vote to raise the debt ceiling. She will destroy the economy to bring down Obama, the Tea Party’s stated priority. Un-friggin-believable. And they call themselves patriots.

She is really driving me crazy. It is like she wants to return the US to the 1800’s. Or maybe the dark ages.

All day I’ve been e-mailing media pundits, asking them to accurately portray the right wing. Because what you see on CNN (and sometimes MSNBC) is “both sides are to blame.” Sorry, false equivalence. Only one side is to blame.